


The Discerning Gentleman’s Guide to Cross-dressing (and Other Such Glimpses of Love)

by oohmrsharp (selahexanimo)



Category: Leviathan - Scott Westerfeld
Genre: Drabble Collection, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-27
Updated: 2013-12-26
Packaged: 2018-01-06 07:23:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1104041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/selahexanimo/pseuds/oohmrsharp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Deryn and Alek, post-<em>Goliath</em>.</p>
<p>“Not that he minded seeing her in a jacket and trousers every day. It was part of the frisson of their romance, that he knew something about her that only a handful of others did.”<br/>-- from the "Bonus Goliath Chapter" by Scott Westerfeld</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Honeymoon

**Author's Note:**

> All drabbles were originally posted at oohmrsharp.tumblr.com

The wedding doesn’t happen for a good decade. (No proposal until Deryn’s going on twenty-five, though Deryn maintains that one doesn’t count because  _she’s_  the one who blurts out the question while drinking too much bourbon and she’s sorry because she wanted  _Alek_  to ask  _her_ , not the other way around. Look, she can’t help being a romantic, old-fashioned sop when she’s drunk. Or, occasionally, while sober.)

But the honeymoon starts the moment Alek tosses an empire over the side of the  _H.M.S Leviathan_  for her in 1914 and kisses her without giving a damn about who might be watching.

**Coda**

They spend their actual honeymoon trying not to get shot on Society business, and Deryn’s mother sighs when the letter she receives from her newlywed daughter amounts to  _sorry, Ma, no gory details—it’s classified. —Love, Deryn_


	2. Bedlam

The first time—while in the midst of  _carnal relations_  more feverish than even Deryn, in her filthiest daydreams, could imagine—Alek topples out of bed, cracks a flailing arm against the bedside table, and sends it crashing.

For a moment, they are both so surprised that they gape at each other.

And then Deryn starts laughing. By the time Alek joins her, she’s hyperventilating. He crawls back up beside her and they howl until they’re crying. Bovril in the next room mulls over the word  _Bedlam_ , which the loris has lately learned from a boffin with a hysterical wife.


	3. Dressing

He’s supposed to be looking for his gloves, but he’s watching her button her cufflinks in the cloudy mirror, instead, contemplating the powerful line of her body in the gray serge suit, her clean cut shoulders, her legs an endless glory. But he is contemplating, too, what he cannot see: small, tight breasts, the barely-there curve of her hips—her body very much a woman’s beneath the masculine triangle the suit makes of her silhouette.

She coughs. He realizes she’s eyeing him back. Licking her lips.

“We’ve still got an hour,” she says. “Plenty of time to get dressed again.”

**Coda**

Barely enough time, it turns out—but there’s only a handful of people at the London Zoological Society dinner who could begin to guess why Mr. Hohenberg and Mr. Sharp arrive late and out of breath—and those people aren’t talking. 


	4. Beginning

When they are still very young and somewhat shy about the intimacy of  _making love_ , they spend their nights and occasional free afternoons side by side in one another’s beds or in the park grass, tucked beneath counterpanes and picnic blankets, in pajamas and slops, Alek’s head numbing Deryn’s arm, Deryn using Alek’s stomach for a desk. They talk and tease and doze, forgetting the time—and sometimes they simply look and touch and marvel.

Half a century on, they have circled back to the beginning. They are not shy now. Just tired, and in need of a little comfort.


	5. Help

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for Day #4 of Dalek Week 2013. AU drabble in which Alek and Deryn are characters in a sword-and-sorcery novel.

Alek’s peasant disguise is insufficient. The tavern rogues surround his table before he can draw his sword.

“Well now,” the biggest sneers. “Ye look like ye can buy a round for me and the lads. What’dya say, ye little filthy rich brat?”

Alek begins to say something defiant and noble—but then a dagger sprouts from the rouge’s shoulder and ends their conversation.

There is a hail of daggers, howling, and hurried retreat. Alek blinks up at his rescuer: a tall, sandy-haired boy.

“You seemed a bit distressed,” says the boy, then winks, bows. “Sir Dylan, mercenary, at your service.”


	6. Austria

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for Day #3 of Dalek Week 2013. In which Deryn misuses latin for the greater good. _Bella gerant alii, tu, felix austria, nube!_

Deryn whispers the last four words of the Habsburg motto against Alek’s neck; at “nube,” her voice lifts in a question. Alek goes still. In the darkness of their bedroom, he can only feel her curled against him. Disbelief burns through him like fever; he breathes, “Say it again.” 

“My Latin’s that mangled?” She sounds miffed. But she tries again, in German: “ _Willst du mich heiraten_?”

He trembles; he seizes her hands and gasps, laughing, “Say it again.” 

“You  _ninny_.” She laughs, but obliges him. “Will you marry me?”

“Yes.” He kisses her palms. “Yes and yes and  _yes_.”


	7. Despair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for Day #5 of Dalek Week 2013. AU in which Alek and Deryn are in a depressing time travel romance.

Alek moves in with his daughter when it becomes too difficult to live alone. He keeps to his room. He’s lived too long; he’s ready to die.

Each morning, he wakes to a different version of Deryn: Deryn at seven, colorless as a photograph, piping, “Who are you?” Deryn at fifteen, in uniform, staring at him in consternation; Deryn at twenty, demanding, “Where the bloody hell am I?” Deryn as he last saw her, in traveling clothes, smile bewildered, saying, “… Alek?”

She never ages beyond forty.

“Please,” he whispers, to each of them. “Don’t leave me.”

She never listens.


	8. Happy Days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for Day #7 of Dalek Week 2013. In which Deryn is delighted by bath time.

The idea comes from nowhere and sinks its claws into Deryn’s attic: climbing into Alek’s bath, shirtsleeves rolled up, little tsunamis licking her back as she straddles him, soaps him down, and leans in to taste, with slow, open-mouthed kisses, the soap-salt of his skin.

The reality, when it happens, isn’t erotic: they  _need_  the bath. Alek slings lather into her face; she wrestles him down to scrub his hair. They nearly break their necks tottering hand-in-hand across the slick floor, giggling like two malfunctioning perspicacious lorises.

The bath leaves something to be desired—but the sex, afterward, is  _brilliant_.

**Coda**

There’s a scary moment where Alek thinks they’ll both drown in bathwater gone briny with soap—but somehow they don’t.


End file.
